4/14/07

If the 2010 election for governor were being held today, and the candidates were Rob Simmons and Richard Blumenthal, who would you vote for?

Selection

Votes

Richard Blumenthal (D)

49%

107

Rob Simmons (R)

48%

104

I don't know

3%

7

218 votes total

Poll powered by Pollhost. Poll results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

And the other ones, matching Malloy VS Simmons and Courtney VS Sullivan are here.

Right now Blumenthal has a slight lead over Simmmons, and the other matchups make it look even more dismal for anyone running under the Republican banner in Blue Connecticut as Malloy has a 25% lead, and Courtney has a 37% lead.

Go on over and vote.

I am hoping that the Republicans are starting to get the point concerning just how far right wingnutty their politics are viewed as in Connecticut and the rest of the nation.

Nobody is willing to stand behind the GOP elephant anymore... It has crapped on us all too many times.

4/13/07

but somethings are so nasty to say that if you say them, the person who sues doesn't have to prove she's suffered financial loss. the law assumes that certain words are inherently injurious. and such words are called slander per se. what words? let's ask dancingwithlawyers:

"under common law, slander traditionally was actionable per se if it fell into one of four categories:

imputations of criminal conduct

allegations injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession

imputations of loathsome disease

imputations of unchastity in a woman"

well, you might ask, could calling a young successful female athlete a "nappy headed ho" constitute an "imputation of unchastity?" especially in this day and hip hop age?

"unchastity" is essentially meaningless as an accusation agains an adult woman, but probably still grounds for legal action when made against a teenage girl."

hmm.

There seems to be little doubt. Especially if you couple "unchastity" with the fact that he said they were "Hos", possibly implying that they were in the worlds oldest (and mostly illegal) profession which would, likely, count as "imputations of criminal conduct." It depends on how you define "Ho".

I am not a lawyer, so I am just guessing here. Also, I am not those Rutgers' students, so I can't say whether they will try and go to court or not. But they probably could if they wanted to. And I wouldn't blame them if they did.

4/12/07

It has become pretty darn obvious that the White House has been breaking laws out the ying-yang in order to hide their "hard work" at the taxpayers expense. Dan Froomkin lays out the basics:

But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: "Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

"As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."

snip

Stanzel said that "some people" may have used their non-government accounts for official business due to "an abundance of caution" in order to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government e-mail for overtly political purposes, such as fundraising -- and due to "logistical convenience."

Let's be clear on what Stanzel is saying here. They were trying to hide the fact that they were illegally doing political fundraising, etc., on our dollar by using outside Email services.

Now my biggest question here, since they seem to be using it for official government work as well which is illegal according to the Hatch act:

According to one former White House official familiar with Rove’s work habits, the president’s top political adviser does ‘about 95 percent’ of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. … The former White House official, speaking on background, said that although the RNC had a policy to purge e-mails after a short period of time, Rove’s e-mails on its system and those of a few other White House aides in sensitive positions were preserved by the RNC “to protect Karl.” Even with a policy of deleting e-mails from servers, information-technology experts say, organizations rarely erase data entirely.

There has got to be some great gems in there concerning these traitors and related to the outing of the entire spy network of Brewster and Jennings that Plame was involved in.

Why hasn't anyone else noted this obvious probability yet? Fitz needs to get ou his shovel and start digging all over again because if he only sifted through White House Email system it is obvious he only got about 5% of the picture.

Time to get some of that sand out of his eyes, no?

As a side note: The White House is claiming many relevent Emails are lost, but Leahy points out the obvious.

“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Leahy shouted from the Senate floor. “You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”

“Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of ‘the dog ate my homework.’”(Think Progress has the video)

While I suspect that all they may have to do is check the hard drives of the users computers to come up with a lot of it, Leahy is on the right track here. You can never really completely delete anything unless you are a hardcore technology geek that knows where, and has access to everywhere, the info hides after deleting it.

You would have to work very hard to purposefully delete it completely from everywhere that information has passed.

I am not saying that this is how Ken Krayeske ended up on "THE LIST" but it is definately a possibility.

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method: "The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible."

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”

Not all Mr. Vonnegut’s themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.

snip

To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” summed up his philosophy:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

By John Kenney, JOHN KENNEY is a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.April 7, 2007

The delegation arrived at the market [in Baghdad], which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees … and attack helicopters…. Sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests…. At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain … and his three congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime," offered Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican. — New York Times

---

MY WIFE came into the living room wearing a Kevlar vest, helmet and night-vision goggles.

I placed my hand at my head. I'd been so caught up in stitching a minor wound I'd received earlier in the day after going to an outdoor fruit stand that I had completely forgotten.

"I'm a dope, aren't I?" I said, chuckling, slowly shaking my head back and forth. She chuckled too, also shaking her head. We both chuckled. Then I winced from where a stitch popped.

Carol helped the boys get ready, putting on their sneakers and body armor. I phoned the Indiana National Guard so that they could radio the 434th Special Air Wing at Grissom Air Force Base, which in turn scrambled two F-14 Tomcats. Then we hopped in the wagon.

Carol and I moved to Muncie from Detroit. Frankly, we were tired of the noise, the dirt and the crime. Here, you feel so safe, as long as you move very quickly through the market, keep your head down and have appropriate air cover.

Carol handed each of the boys — 8 and 5, and a handful, let me tell you — a juice box, a Xanax and personalized Navy SEAL-issue GPS systems.

"Dad?" said Kevin, our 8-year-old, from the back seat.

"Yes, Kev," I said.

"Can we go to that cotton candy stand again?"

The F-14s flew by low. Each of us activated our earpieces and hand-held mini walkie-talkies, agreed on a frequency, and I slowed the car to 15 mph as Carol and the boys opened the doors and rolled out, taking cover under shrubbery near the Bibb lettuce stand (the boys love salad!).

So far, so good.

I hit the gas and spun the car and parked in a ditch that had once been a Tasty Donut before a tactical nuclear weapon had decimated it. Great parking space, though.

I saw my neighbor, Larry, under his car, from the looks of it a spanking-new Bradley fighting vehicle. "Snipers today," Larry said with a smile.

"Nice ride, Larry," I said as I dove under the car, a sniper's bullet exploding inches away from my foot. "Looks solid."

"The hull is constructed of welded aluminum and spaced laminate armor," he said, burying his head in the dirt as another round came in. "The Israelis use them. I had an Explorer, but it was blown to bits last time I went out for garbage bags."

"Roomy?"

"Ton of room. Carries three crew, commander, gunner and driver, plus six fully equipped infantrymen. Mileage is awful, but with all the space in the back, it's great for the market."

I borrowed his high-power binoculars to check on the family's progress.

Kevin and his little brother had successfully bought lettuce, fruit and homemade jams before a particularly well-placed rocket-propelled grenade destroyed the stand (the owner managed to avoid the hit and began rebuilding immediately, as weekends are, obviously, his busiest time).

Carol, I noticed, had found cover behind the wall of a largely destroyed warehouse. A sniper had a bead on the glint from her eyeglasses, which the afternoon sunshine had caught (Indiana is known for its beautiful summers).

Larry asked me to cover him, and he rolled out from under the BFV and hopped in. I activated heavy smoke bombs, and his car tore out of the field. I made it back to my car as Larry's choppers came in low over the market, taking heavy fire and destroying the sniper's den (about time, thank you very much) as well as a Toys R Us that was closed for renovation.

I could see the smoke in the rear-view mirror when Carol dove onto the hood, managing to hold onto the bundles (that woman never ceases to amaze me). I hit the brakes and she got in quickly.

"You put on face paint," I said, giving her a quick kiss.

"You wouldn't believe how crowded it was," she said, panting. "I saw Margie Hynes. Boy, has she put on weight."

A CBU-52B cluster bomb exploded to our left, and I hit the gas. We could see the boys ahead, waving flares in the dense smoke. I didn't stop the car completely. Kevin threw Chip in first, then jumped in himself.

Both immediately vomited from the smoke.

"You kids have fun?" Carol asked.

"Yeah!" said Chip.

"He was holding a loaf of bread and it got blown out of his hand!"

"It was so awesome, Mum."

We all laughed. Really hard. That's how shopping is in Indiana in the summer. It's just fun. It's fun and safe and hopeful and full of warm and welcoming Indianans and insurgents and snipers and bombs.

I guess that with Rell's 8 hour per week schedule in the month of March, in honor of the "Holy Month of the Easter Bunny," she just doesn't have time for a certain "kind" of kids. You know? The kind that might not make her look so homophobic if she had taken a few minutes out of her busy schedule to meet them.

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Larry Craig and David Vitter — “two United States Senators implicated in extramarital sexual activity” — have named themselves as co-sponsors of S.J. Res. 43, the Marriage Protection Amendment. If passed, the bill would amend the Constitution to declare that marriage “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”